Hence onward to the _Tore Cascade_, descending its silver staircase amid green trees and graceful ferns,--the latter including, as we were told, the rare _Trichomanes speciosum_. Here there is a lovely landscape of the _Middle and Lower Lakes_, and there were seats wherefrom to enjoy it, until those despicable snobs, who had mutilated the trees in _Rohnaines Island_, threw them (sweet gentlemen!) down the waterfall. And it's O for a _tête-à-tête_ with the principal performer, in the unbroken seclusion of a twenty-four foot ring!
But we must think more wisely, as we approach the solemn ruins of _Mucross_, than of punching our fellow-creatures' heads, though even here upon the very tombs, the miscreants have been at work,--disporting themselves, like filthy ghouls and vampires--and scrabbling upon the stones, as madmen will.
So much remains, both of Church and Abbye, that imagination readily supplies what is gone. Here in the Choir, where that ill-tempered looking tourist is reprimanding his wife for giving a beggar twopence, the brothers of St. Francis of Assisi were wont to sing holy psalms; and there in the Cloisters, where those two gaily-dressed French girls are admiring the gigantic yew-tree, and wondering what has become of “_ce cher Jules_,” (whom I apprehend to be a lover, but who comes round the corner, a poodle, dreadful to contemplate!) there
and there paced the pale Franciscan, in the sombre habit of his order, and girded with his hempencord.
Laugh on, sweet Stephanie, joyous Josephine (I heard their names from Mamma in search); but be not cruel with your charms, for Love, unloved, can still change men to monks,--forlorn and wretched, though in crowded streets, as he, of whom Percy sang:
“Within these holy cloysters long He languisht, and he dyed Lamenting of a lady's love, And 'playning of her pride.”
There are some beautiful ferns among and about these ruins, but being a very poor Polypodian, or Scolopendrian (or whatever may be the scientific title of a Fernist), I only recognised the Hart's-tongue,--with its fructification arranged like a miniature plan of ships in order of battle,--and of this I gathered some very fine fronds, and put them in my hat, as will appear hereafter.